of native trees, shrubs, and flowers, renewals to be in kind or in harmony. The rehabilitation of the unkempt slope between the brook and White Street is the principal planting problem, although there will be new groups of shrubs at the intersections of the paths and flanking the gateways and bridges, hardy natives being favored. Any exotics introduced for variety's sake must be in harmony with present flora. Thus planted, the care of lawns, ponds, paths, steps, and shrubbery should call for but one permanent, efficient man, with occasional seasonal help. Introducing incongruous flowerbeds would not only greatly increase expense, but would spoil the chief purpose of the park, "the preservation of beauty in native scenery of this limited area." The association's Park and Playground Committee will restrain future officials, forgetful of this aim and anxious to introduce inappropriate embellishments such as flower-beds or elaborate accessories. The low land beyond the limits of the park, to the east, remains the uncertainty that may make or mar results. Today it is a mowing-meadow, attractive and harmless. The alert members of your association will arouse and maintain the strong public sentiment needful either to restrain inharmonious developments there or, better yet, will secure its purchase by the town. The plan accepted and these various suggestions accomplished, a few years hence this Community Park will be a joy to stay-at-homes and visitors. Why do we not have more such parks? How make a wiser provision for posterity's good? Not infrequently suitable land of slight market value is available, often, as here, with promise of both harm and charm. Perhaps the practice will become more prevalent when it is realized how inexpensively results may be accomplished through the application of that prime principle of landscape architecture, "the fitting of landscape to human use and enjoyment in such manner as may be most appropriate and most beautiful in any given spot or region. When this is generally understood by the public and practiced by the profession, parks and countryseats will be so designed as to be not only well arranged and beautiful, but beautiful in some distinctive and characteristic way, as in this instance." At present, perhaps fortunately, the town has no Park Department. The Green, your only public pleasure ground, has been under the nominal and vacillating care of a member of the Board of Selectmen. Now that you are enriched by this splendid Community Park gift, and will without doubt acquire more lands by the river, together with squares and playgrounds elsewhere, selected and distributed, let us hope, with thoughtful care, there should soon be a Park and Playground Commission. The two functions may wisely be merged for a town of this size, although this is not best for a larger city. Experience suggests not less than five, probably seven, members representing as far as may be all interests and districts of the community; certainly one, perhaps two of them women. All of them are to be appointed by the town's governing body and will serve without compensation, being selected because of their appreciation of parks and playgrounds, breadth of view, and sound judgment—such as are now serving so admirably as Trustees of your Public Library and upon your School Committee. Of course, moreover, jurisdiction over playgrounds implies sympathetic co-operation with the latter Board. Terms of office will be so arranged that two members retire each year with no provision against reappointment, permitting the formation and execution of a comprehensive policy but affording opportunity for the infusion of new life when need arises. It is of vital importance that this Commission, Board, or Committee should have administrative charge, not alone of the Community Park and the Village Green, but of all present and prospective lands that are or may be dedicated to the town for park or playground purposes. Furthermore, in its organization, pray avoid the District Committee noted earlier in this letter, in regard to committees of your Association: let duties be specific in nature but of general application. Your association will be influential in preparing and securing the enactment of ordinances enabling the formulation of such a Park Department and policy, and in the selection of this Commission. The Commission once chosen, the notice shown on the following page, if posted in all the grounds under its jurisdiction, would be helpful. A notice containing the last phrase of the placard mentioned is printed in French and Flemish in all parks in Brussels. Is it any wonder that in the face of such an appeal little damage is done? Whatever ordinance you may wish to frame to save offenses of this sort might follow this in smaller type. PARK COMMISSION NOTICE This land is held in trust for the enjoyment of the citizens of the town in their successive generations. All who enter here will bear in mind that they are fellowtrustees in this trust and they will consequently avoid and, if necessary, prevent any injury to the banks, lawns, trees, shrubs, or flowering plants. Remember that the trees give us shade, while the plants and flowers give us the joy and the beauty of the country: therefore to break or destroy trees and plants is to do damage to one's self. In closing, a word as to program: First secure the Town Hall and Main Street improvements, then rearrange the Green and the station grounds, so that the entrance porch or vestibule to your town may present an inviting appeal. In the meantime, develop the Community Park in accord with the plan herewith presented. Next in order, perhaps, will come river-bank improvements, as herein proposed in very general terms, their execution implying detailed study and plans. Meanwhile, the several alert committees of your association will immediately begin their duties. Varied interests, to be effective, while planned comprehensively, will best be executed separately. Concentrate, therefore, on some one important object each year and get it done! Pray accept my congratulations upon your possibilities and particularly upon the spirit with which both town and Association are meeting them. May the many interesting projects here considered move forward to prosperous fruition. Believe me Faithfully yours THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Can we deliberate about play, devote time, money, and brains to working it out, without losing our sense of humor and proportion; without stultifying ourselves? I hope to answer these questions with a "Yes!" that has some ring to it. Would it might echo and pass on to you a deep and rallying note from the spirit of youth and from the city streets, both of which I love. -DR. RICHARD C. CABOT A FEW years pass and the Mill Village discussed earlier is now no longer a satellite, but a subsidiary center in the Greater City's illplanned aggrandizement. Realizing that "the boy without a playground is the father of the man without a job," a Playground Commission is authorized and given comprehensive powers. Our client is chosen chairman and confers with the landscape architect on the principles underlying the selection, distribution, and design of playgrounds, in particular, a plan for a model playground. (HI.) OFFICE OF THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Mr. A. D. Vance Chairman of the Playground Commission MY DEAR SIR: Your Commission asks, "What light can landscape architecture shed on our problem? We desire especially a plan for a model playground and Neighborhood Center-one that will express the best in playground design and be readily adjusted to the several districts of the expanding city." The last quarter-century has witnessed a revolution in our attitude toward play or recreation. The social evils emerging from that vicious by-product of commercial greed, the "corrosive city slum," and from "mar ginal hours" misspent in saloon (H2) and public dance hall, have demonstrated the necessity of substitutes, if these are to be abolished. We now realize the wisdom of beginning "to spend liberally to help people keep right, and not solely to apprehend them after they have gone wrong"; in other words, housing, correctional, and labor problems are coincident with the problem of leisure, and a correct solution of the latter may go far toward solving them all. We are told by Percy Mackaye that "the use of a Nation's leisure is the test of its civilization," that if "the nineteenth century was the century of the Machine, the twentieth must be the century of the Man." It cannot be doubted that a playground system, well conceived and administered, will have a powerfully uplifting influence upon human destiny. The old order is in the moment of adjustment to new conditions: special advocates of the Playground Movement with fine spirit and definite aims are working out its principles and details in a truly scientific manner, and notwithstanding present partial success the movement has acquired such momentum that it cannot fail. Recreational influences that counterbalance the "strain of striving" are varied; among them may be mentioned: church, theater, moving-pictures, concerts, and lectures (indoors and out); attendance, if not participation, in outdoor games; the stimulus and restfulness of complete park systems, including great state and county scenic reservations, with camping, tramping, and other diversions in the open; the more completely developed urban park systems, which best preserve "distinctive passages of rural scenery" when relieved of boisterous games and the apparatus of youthful pleasure, which, if permitted in parks, should be segregated. These with stronger appeal perhaps for the grown-up, serve rather the spirit of restful quiet and contemplation than of play. Your problem, true recreation for the masses through play, is emphatic and portentous. This successfully solved, succeeding generations will rise up and call you blessed. Upon what does a correct solution depend, and how may the landscape architect help? This many-sided problem, closely knit with those of housing, education, sanitation, transportation, is in truth a vital element of the far greater subject, city-planning, and a multitude are thoughtfully and earnestly seeking the fundamental principles here in America, as evidenced by the Reports of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, the National |